


We Kept this Hat of Broken Dreams

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-22 22:30:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10706469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: A season five finale AU follow up to this:If You've Never Heard That Silence, It's a God Awful Sound...





	We Kept this Hat of Broken Dreams

In the end they go nowhere.

Months pass, a belly swells. Shoulders bump, fingers brush when it seems no one else is looking. And it almost feels like staying was a conscious choice despite the fact that it never really was.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

She still whispers his name, breathless and faded into the inky black, like a never-ending question. And he still has no idea what any of the answers are.

What they will ever be.

They have no idea where they're headed to next.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

He watches the world pass them by through lowered lashes, eyes never quite committing to contact. It's a balancing act, half mast to her wild, wide-eyed gaze. A stunned look of terror that she never manages to hide completely.

Mostly, he pretends not to notice. And it's so much easier that way.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

They stumble through the months holding in a collective breath. United by a dusty promise of new life and an absolute belief that the other is already two steps out a closing door and fleeing fast.

No time to look back.

She replaces the bathroom mat on a tentative whim and in the ice filled aftermath he doesn't come home for three days. Her heart lives in the back of her throat, thrums to the beat of a life she almost doesn't recognise as her own. He returns as the sun is setting.

And the metaphors are blinding.

They have no idea where they're headed to next.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

She comes silently into this world. Alert and curious. Wary. Like maybe she's already sentient of the ghosts that haunt the faded hallways of her new home. Creak open doors and tap at windows when the rain falls.

The rain always falls.

She has her father's brooding grey eyes and her mother's shy smile. Despite this, or maybe because of it, they're always three quarters to convinced that she'll up and leave them both first chance she gets.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

He takes up vigil on a chair in the corner of her room, a perfect mirror image of her mother as impossibly tiny fingers curl around the curves of his thumb. A desperate grip he recognises so completely as his own.

Fight over flight until it all falls apart in the end.

Soundless, countless apologies for failures that he's sure are yet to come fill the moonlit air between them.

Stars and satellites and the infinite night sky.

 

 

\- - -

 

 

A hand settles on his shoulder, feather light with apprehension and fear and something that might taste a little bit like hope.

If he'll let it.

He looks out through the shadows, slides his gaze from one to the other and back down again. Still not entirely convinced that a puff of smoke won't take it all away.

A path opens up ahead. Cobblestones and slate and pitted, pot-holded mud. A disjointed line between where they are now and what it is that comes next.

They have no idea how they'll get to there.


End file.
